


Like all growing things, it takes love

by kayejwrotes



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fairies, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Getting to Know Each Other, Happy Birthday Oikawa Tooru!, M/M, Magic, Non-Linear Narrative, Plants, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 20:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kayejwrotes/pseuds/kayejwrotes
Summary: Hajime watches Tooru as he nips and tends carefully at the juniper bush.He's observed him countless times doing this.There's a soft look in his eyes, as he watches Tooru chat with all his plants.In the end, he's always been right.Like all growing things, it takes love to make something bloom.





	Like all growing things, it takes love

**Author's Note:**

> I can finally post this!! And on Oikawa's birthday too!  
> I wrote this fic for the Vinculum - Through all Universes zine.  
> I honestly had do much fun working on this with everyone and when I looked at the final product was so amazed by the good quality of all the works!  
> Thank you to the Mods - for all their time and the endless work out into the zine -, to all the contributors who wrote and drew wonderful figs and art, and to everyone who purchased the zine and believed in our work.  
> I hope you'll enjoy the zine and this fic too!

Hajime watches Tooru as he nips and tends carefully at the juniper bush. It's grown quite a lot in this few months, thanks to the perfect climate that it took advantage of in the last place they had set it.

Tooru's using a pair of sharp scissors, long fingers caressing through the small branches as he chooses where to cut and where not to, each time with the same tender care.

Hajime has observed him countless times doing this. 

It’s quite the experience watching him work in his apothecary. 

The place is not small nor excessively big. It feels spacious enough without being empty. There are shelves and cabinets full of books, small potted plants and vases with berries, leaves and weird concoctions in oddly shaped glass bottles, twinkling with blues, greens, yellows and purples in the dim light filtering through frosted glass.

The sight of Tooru smiling in between all this mess, surrounded by the smell of soil and flowers, feels like home.

He has a habit of talking with his plants while he works. 

He says they are quite the talkative beings if one is careful enough to pay them attention. 

So he talks with his juniper bush while he prunes it. Murmured questions, soft reprimands, a few laughs here and there and then he cuts, he decides to let it grow. 

The soft, greenish glow of his fingers it’s the only indication he is actually doing something other than common plant care on it. One could easily mistake him for a very chatty gardener otherwise.

Since Hajime has been helping him in the shop, Tooru has been encouraging him to do the same more than once, repeating every time how much plants enjoy being talked to and the fact that they both listen and answer if they get curious enough. 

He keeps saying that if he puts enough effort into it, they’ll feel his care and grow accordingly, even with no magic. 

Like all growing things, they just want love.

Hajime has tried, but he isn't Tooru. 

He cannot hear them, no matter how hard he strains his ears. There’s no light on his fingers.

They re-potted the juniper bush quite a few times during the years, and yet that thing still manages to outgrow whatever pot they choose for it. 

Hajime still remembers how it was when he first saw it, just a few buds attached to the ugliest branches he'd ever seen, sticking out in every direction with no real form to it.

Since that moment, his life had taken a detour he was very happy he did end up taking. 

It had given him Tooru.

Every time he saw Tooru smiling while working, he couldn’t help thinking that he had been very lucky to stumble into his shop that day. 

He had been running at full speed down the street, hopping on the stairs bringing him downtown, looking everywhere for some way of escape.

  
It was amazing, the grace and strength with which he jumped over the railing, gliding on the handrail with his sneakers, the backpack on his shoulders clinking in a cacophony of metal zippers with every new movement. 

He jumped down, speeding for a few meters before leaping over an open trash can and kicking it on the street. Paper and all kind of rubbish spilled onto the street, but he didn’t turn around. He kept running, rolling over a small divider between houses.

He glanced toward his left, still running like the wind, the concrete divider at his right.    
As if he had been waiting for it, he put his feet on a slightly elevated piece of sidewalk where some roots had cracked the pavement and jumped onto the street below.

His legs were kicking forward, as if still running, even through the air. 

It was kind of magical, how he landed without breaking his neck. Rolling gracefully on his back, he was on his feet, sweat coiling at the nape of his neck, as he bolted once again.

It would be an amazing performance, worthy of praise, if it wasn’t for the dust cloud made of angry, howling goblins hurrying after him.

There’s a full group of them, six or seven, tumbling down the stairs with no apparent care, jumping on their long arms to try to catch his feet. They pushed on their long arms and leapt forward, over the rubbish strewn on the street. Some of them fell, but no one seemed to be too concerned. They just kept going forward and yelling at the running guy, trying to get him in any way they could.

If Hajime ran like water over rocks, smooth and powerful, the goblins were like tin cans, rattling loudly on the concrete.

But Hajime was quick.   
He pivoted on his feet with a strong movement of his left foot, jumping on the wall dividing the road from the private properties. He pulled himself up, flying over the wall and disappearing into a private courtyard, away from the angry bellows of the goblins following him.

They wouldn’t get him that easily.

Hajime found himself in a part of the city he had the distinctive feeling he shouldn't be in.

It isn’t that magical creatures and regular humans don't live in the same spaces… it is more to the likes that they prefer to keep to their own parts of the cities. 

Not exactly ghettos, but one can easily tell where magical creatures live and where they don't. 

He had felt it too, as he had jumped over the fence, that slight push in his head that told him to go back, take a turn left and go outside that neighborhood, but he could still hear the goblins snarling behind him. He had no intention to go anywhere near them.

He had sprinted into a maze of streets with no apparent sense or purpose, until he stumbled in front of a shop.

There wasn’t anything very descriptive outside, if not for the sign “ _ Apothecary _ ”, written with fancy handwriting. 

He couldn’t make out what was going on inside, the coloured glass that made the door not letting him see anything, but it had a soothing feeling that drew him in.    
Or he liked to say it was the feeling the shop gave him. 

The fact that there was another handwritten sign on the left saying “ _ Humans are welcome! _ ” was irrelevant.

He still remembered clearly the first moment he had laid his eyes on him.

Oikawa was tending to a particularly reluctant juniper bush. 

The little bush was barely budding in its pot, and yet it seemed like he was too stubborn to follow Oikawa’s lovely guidance and go toward sunnier places than the darkest corner of the inner garden. 

Or that was what the creature behind the counter was saying.

It seemed like he was trying to convince it to develop in the right way, with soft words and gentle caresses through the spiky branches, before brusquely shutting up when Hajime had slammed the door closed behind himself, the soft tingling of silver bells ringing for long in his ears.

He stopped on the threshold, not knowing if he felt so out of breath for the long run or if it was because of the beautiful man behind the counter.

The man, a faerie maybe, judging from the pointed ears peeking out of the softest shade of brown hair he had ever seen, was looking at him with a confused look as if he didn’t know what to do with him.

Hajime was ready to excuse himself for such an entrance... when suddenly there were books crashing on him with no mercy. 

The faerie-man watched him wince with every book falling on his head, but didn’t move a finger to help him.

Instead, he looked at Hajime as if he was frozen on the spot, juniper bush still in his hand - a shy tendril carefully wrapping around his wrist as if looking for some sort of protection. 

Hajime observed him curiously as he subtly caressed it, unwrapping the small branch with a gentle twist of his arm as if trying to reassure the poor bush that everything was fine.

The faerie was opening his mouth to say something when they heard turmoil outside the door. Panicking, Hajime ducked behind the counter, hiding under the desk and trying to make himself look as inconspicuous as he could. 

The faerie glanced down at him frowning deeply, lips twisted as if barely containing his annoyance, but he stopped himself as he saw Hajime’s pleading with his eyes to not rattle him out. 

For a moment it seemed like the faerie was almost tempted to sell him out, but as the door opened and a rowdy group of goblins tumbled in, jumping carelessly on the books laying on the floor, looking at the vases on the shelves with greedy eyes, Hajime caught a glimpse of an even more annoyed look at the newcomers before it was replaced with perfect smile.

The faerie greeted them with a customer-charming grin, watching one trying to eat one of the hydrangeas blossoms and getting smacked by an ivy vine in the process.

Hajime was still hiding under the desk. He couldn’t see anything, but he heard the thumps and sniffing of the goblins. His heart was beating haphazardly as he resigned to his fate of being discovered, but with a quick wave of the faerie’s left hand under the counter, a veil of sleep and invisibility fell on Hajime.

The last thing he saw was the greenish hue of the man’s fingers.

When Hajime opened his eyes again, he felt completely rested, as if just waking up from a full night of sleep.

Instead that in his bed, though, he was sitting on a comfortable plush chair, completely out of place when compared to his surroundings. 

The light was filtering in the room from a frosted glass window pane on the far right. 

There were a few bags of compost lying on the ground, buckets full of water and weird greenish algae, and other things he couldn’t really make out in the dusty light. 

It looked like he was in the shop’s back.

Right in front of him, a pair of big brown eyes was scrutinizing him with curiosity. 

Hajime blinked his eyes twice. There were little flecks of gold and green in those eyes, so thin one would never be able to notice if it wasn’t this close to the faerie’s face.

As soon as the faerie noticed that Hajime was awake, he jumped back, not quite landing on the floor but gliding, a barely visible trail of green and gold glitter following his movement.

“Where am I?” Hajime had asked, voice rough. He could still feel the aftertaste of something incredibly sweet in his mouth but didn’t know where it came from.

“I am the one asking questions here.” answered the faerie with a deeper voice than he had expected.    
“So,” he began with a flourish of his hand in a tingling of bells - Hajime noticed them now as they sparked under the dusty light from where they were stitched on the faerie’s clothes - “ your name, first.”

“My name is…” and Hajime stopped abruptly, as the warnings the old women of his neighbourhood gave him as a kid came back to his memory all at once. 

( _ “Never give your name to a faerie Hajime-chan! They’ll steal it and make you their puppet!”) _   
He now knew that there were government laws to prevent this but still… “Give me yours and I’ll give you mine.” He said in one breath.

“How rude! I’m just trying to be polite, you know?!” the faerie exclaimed, offended, or so it seemed.

“You were the rude one first! What, do you consider me so stupid to give you my name that easily?”

“Well, I admit I had some doubts about your intelligence since you were the one that angried a group of goblins in the first place…”

“I didn’t do it on purpose! It was an accident!”   
  
“Oh, now it’s an accident provoking goblins...!”

And that’s how Hajime remembered their first encounter. With a lot of bantering and bickering. 

He’d never met a more stubborn person than this faerie, and yet he’d felt entranced by him.

He had come back the next day. The day after. And the day after that too.

At first the faerie - Oikawa - had been suspicious, but after the third time, something about Hajime seemed to have gained his approval. Maybe it was the hearty smell of coffee and the sugary pastry that he brought with him as an apology. 

Maybe it was the genuine curiosity he displayed in trying to get to know Oikawa and his plants.

To this day, he still won’t get a clear answer from Tooru.

From that moment on, he began spending an incredible amount of time with Oikawa, each time growing more fascinated by the faerie, his world, his soul.

Soon, the casual meetings at the apothecary evolved in Hajime helping him as he could, moving pots and heavy bags around like that first time with that juniper bush.

He observed Tooru tending to his plants - glowy green fingers waving around - or interact with his customers. 

He began going out with him in short outings when Tooru went to look for herbs, or other things that grew in particular places.    
  
Hajime was extremely careful in disguising his poor attempts of a courtship as casual coffee breaks during their short trips, or regular meetups as friends at pubs or small restaurants. 

He feared that if Tooru noticed what he was doing, he would have vanished in thin air.

In the end, it was Tooru that surprised him one evening, while they were at his home watching some movie. 

He had snuggled against his side without saying a word, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

When Hajime had turned his head to say something to him - heart beating like a crazy drummer in his chest - Tooru had kissed him on the lips, quickly going back in his comfy place against Hajime’s side as if nothing had happened.

( _ “What... what was that?!” _

_ “You were taking too long and I was tired of waiting...” _

_ “How…?” _

_ “You were quite obvious, you know.” _

_ “Quite obvious my ass! You couldn’t have noticed that easily!” _

_ “No, of course not, Iwa-chan. But when you gave me those flowers it became really obvious. Come on, a single moss rosebud? Don’t forget I’m half-faerie! That little thing rattled your little secret out as soon as I put it in water.” _

_ “Oh my God… you’ll never let me forget this, will you?” _

_ “Never.” _ )

He chuckles now, as he remembers that conversation. So awkward, and yet so beautiful. He wouldn’t have wanted any other way, though.

As he looks at the juniper bush being magically placed in a new, larger pot, he can’t help but feel that spark of fondness in his chest. 

He thinks of the juniper bush as a witness of their love. It had grown with care and tenderness, helped in equal parts by magical green fingers and common human ones.

Tooru always said that. Like all growing things, it takes love to make something bloom.   


**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this!  
> If you liked my fic, please leave comments and kudos, they feed my creativity as a writer!  
> You can find me either on Tumblr or Twitter at kayejwrotes.  
> Come talk to me there! :)


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